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Rethnald
The people of Rethnald, an ancient Miouran nation long lost to history, were said to have been gifted with the ability to speak to the universe on a level that modern historians have called atomic. Each Rethite was born into a specific "clan" of truenamers that held dominion or mastery over a specific group of things, and each clansman would be granted a truename that would be tattooed on their body. Through this truename, if they honed their art, they would forever have an ally in the very foundations of the world around them. Culture Truenames dictated life in Rethnald; all Rethites had a kinsmanship with a particular clan that had a broad focus on a facet of the world, such as an ocean clan or a city clan. Within these clans, the individual members had truename focii on a specific aspect of the clan's focus, such as an ocean clan having members who bear the truenames of wave, fish, and boat. The highest level of hierarchy tended to be whoever held the truename of the clan's focus, and many of these clan leaders specifically dedicated themselves to the art of truenaming and knew the utterances for all truenames within their clan. Some clans chose heirs to the clan leaders by imparting the clan's truename at birth; others would simply grant the truename to whoever proved most worthy of inheriting it. Clans tended to meet and intermingle within Rethite cities, where they swapped information, stories, and perhaps even rarely, "free" truenames from other clans. Of particular note were the "forbidden" truenames, those that specifically could be used to control people. Such truenames were regarded with hostility and fear, with those who knew them or carried them on their bodies at risk for being exiled or worse to keep the rest safe. The written word was banned throughout Rethnald, as it was believed writing down words on anything but a living body would destroy the power of the truename. Histories and stories were passed down orally, except by a few who used the written language of the nearby Shekzard to try and create repositories of truenames in secret. Naming In keeping with their culture of the importance of names, the Rethites held their own names in great secrecy, and they tended to go by euphemistic titles especially in dealings outside of their clan. Within a clan, personal names might be used more often depending on that clan's culture, but mostly in important or emotionally intimate occasions. Some modern historians believe that the Orian cultural quirk of referring to higher-status individuals solely by their title could have been due to influence from their Rethite neighbors, possibly through immigrants long ago. Rethite personal names could be up to four syllables long, with longer names tending to go to older individuals; at birth, children would often have short names that were just a sound and not even a full syllable. Over time, they would "gain" syllables as they grew, much like rings on a tree. Consonant clusters such as ''-sh, -th,'' and ''-ch'' were the most common ways to end a name among the Rethites, and they very rarely had syllables end in anything but a consonant. Category:Mioura Category:Ealdremen History Category:Ealdremen Nations